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Jonah 3: 1-10
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
“Set out for the great city of Nineveh,
and announce to it the message that I will tell you.”
So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh,
according to the LORD’s bidding.
Now Nineveh was an enormously large city;
it took three days to go through it.
Jonah began his journey through the city,
and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing,
“Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”
when the people of Nineveh believed God;
they proclaimed a fast
and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh,
he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe,
covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh,
by decree of the king and his nobles:
“Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,
shall taste anything;
they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.
Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God;
every man shall turn from his evil way
and from the violence he has in hand.
Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath,
so that we shall not perish.”
When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.
The Word of the Lord.
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Aren’t we all like the prophet Jonah from time to time?
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In our first reading, God asks Jonah not once – but twice – to enter the city of Nineveh, imploring the Ninevites to repent.
But Jonah wants nothing to do with it. The Ninevites were the sworn enemies of Israel, so he would rather watch their city burn than to see them repent.
Because of his hesitance, Jonah becomes no different than his sworn enemies; both sides need to repent and seek God’s forgiveness.
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Like Jonah, aren’t there times when we hesitate to do God’s will?
Maybe we hesitate to forgive…or to be forgiven.
We hesitate to make a necessary change in our life.
We hesitate to return to the Sacraments…to tell the truth…to get involved in ministry.
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The time has come. Make the change.
As Saint Paul tells us, “The night is far spent. The day draws near. Let us cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
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Image credits: (1) Kevin Green Wired (2) My Jewish Learning (3) L’eclectique Life